Game Update Notes – 7/31/2013 – 1.11.0.243

Today’s patch is massive and far-reaching. We’ve been working overtime to upgrade almost every component of Marvel Heroes. With this patch we’ve also added our first new hero – the Human Torch – and made a massive change to the way you acquire heroes with the new alternate currency system, Eternity Splinters.

In addition to polish, buffs and overall improvements, we’ve introduced a few features that didn’t make it on launch day. With so many additions to the game, there will be inevitable glitches, unintended changes and even a few changes that didn’t make it into the patch notes below. We’ll be monitoring everything very closely as the patch goes live and standing by to fix anything that is out of place.

New Hero: Human Torch

Human Torch has arrived in Marvel Heroes! Please see this news story for full details on how to get Human Torch and other details. Human Torch is available as an in-game purchase or in exchange for Eternity Splinters. If you want to talk about Human Torch drop by the Human Torch Forum to swap tips and tricks with other players and learn the best way to play!

New free hero system: Eternity Splinters

Eternity Splinters are a new system introduced with this patch for Marvel Heroes. Eternity Splinters replace hero token drops and offer players a chance to earn every hero in any order they wish, simply by playing the game. Adam Warlock sells all heroes for Eternity Splinters along with a few other items. He can be found beside Gambit in all three of the social hubs.

Eternity Splinters drop from all enemies throughout the game. Their drop rate is influenced by your Special Item Find bonus.

The rate of drop is tuned to make Marvel Heroes slightly faster than other free-to-play games in terms of getting free heroes, as we continue to work towards the goal of being the most player-focused game possible. We will continue to evaluate and iterate until we are 100% satisfied that we are meeting that goal.

We intend to add many things to the Eternity Splinter vendor and anticipate future polls and player discussion about items they would like to see.

For those players who still have old Cosmic Keys, they have been converted in your inventory and S.T.A.S.H. on a 1-1 basis for Eternity Splinters. Not many players purchased Cosmic Keys (almost all of them are from drops), but if you purchased a Cosmic Key from the in-game store up to 7 days previous to their removal from the game on July 2nd, and that key has not been used, we will refund the Gs you used to purchase it.

Adam Warlock sells a random hero box that could contain any hero. You can theoretically get a hero you already own from this box, in which case it can be used to upgrade your Ultimate Power.

New Zone Added: Midtown Patrol

A revamped Limbo mode has been added. Enter Manhattan to face off against waves of tough bosses in a city teeming with life!

Highlights:

Patrol Manhattan to fight crime, save civilians and keep the city safe.

Available for all levels of players.

New super villain groups attack the city periodically and must be shut down.

No time limit, no ’threat‘ meter. Everything is challenging, but manageable with the right gear and tactics.

New items in the in-game store

We’ve added several new items to the in-game store. Press ‘X’ while in game to browse and purchase any of these items.

Heroes

Human Torch

Costumes

Human Torch: Blue Costume

Human Torch: Red Costume

Iron Man: Shotgun Armor

Wolverine: Ronin costume

Items

Holographic Crafter: Use this to summon a holographic crafter, who will persist for 15 minutes. The holographic crafter has a one-hour cooldown but can be used permanently.

Matrix of Unbinding: Use this in a crafting recipe to unbind an artifact, weapon or armor item that is bound to you.

Performance Upgrades

Many areas of the game have performance improvements. Some are extremely significant and will greatly upgrade your play experience. A team is continuing to work on this.

Advanced graphics options were added to the video options page. The graphics slider will auto change the new options. Changing an advanced option will set the graphics slider to ’Custom‘ level.

Gameplay Changes

Rested Experience: The concept of “rested experience” has been removed from the game and replaced with a permanent increase in experience and Special Item Find (server side). You can now play whichever hero you wish, whenever you wish and not worry about mix/maxing rested experience. Overall experience will be higher for all players by a noticeable margin.

Movement powers: You can now use movement powers in hubs to get around quicker.

Damage over time powers: These powers can now critical hit and scale properly when in groups.

Damage in groups improved: Enemy health now increases (AKA player damage decreases) at a lower rate when more players are nearby. Grouping will be even more rewarding now.

User Interface

Chat: New options exist on the chat window to control chat filters. Additional chat functionality has been added along with “social”, “lfg” and “endgame” channels with UI to control them. More chat upgrades will appear in the future.

Damage numbers: Floating combat text numbers have been added as an option. Expect a few iterations as we iterate on these to ensure they look good and work right. Green is healing, red is damage and yellow are critical hits. Turn them on by pressing Esc for options and go to the Gameplay options section.

Supergroups: Additional functionality has been added to the Supergroup interface (some sorting technology, display of officer and supergroup name appearing on tab). Additional functionality will be added in future patches to continually improve supergroup support.

Keybinding can now be reverted to default settings.

You can now map mouse buttons 3-6 to various game functions.

The daily terminals will now tell you if you can earn a cosmic shard by completing them. Mouse over the interface to see if a cosmic shard is available.

Zoom levels in hubs is more flexible so you can see your hero in more detail.

Bodysliders: The Bodyslider button next to the Minimap now "fills up" to indicate how much time is left on cooldown. The Bodyslider icon will also change after you use it to return to town indicating that using it again returns you back to the field.

Social Panel: Added player sorting to the Social Panel tabs.

Added confirmation when donating artifacts.

When closing the options menu or switching tabs you will be asked if you want to save pending changes.

We’ve added several pages of tooltip upgrades – too many to list. This impacts powers, items and other UI elements.

Tooltips should now take into consideration the Bonus Damage Multiplier for all powers.

Previously tooltips showed damage as though all powers had a 100% damage multiplier from Damage Rating on items, which is generally not the case. Most powers have anywhere from 10%-90% damage.

Costume Cores

All costume cores now have either 25% item rarity boost or 20% special item find, in addition to other bonuses.

We realize most players prefer one of those bonuses, so we added those to every core in addition to other bonuses so players could personalize their heroes better.

All cores will have 0-2 additional bonuses in addition to item rarity boost or special item find.

New bonuses have been added to cores, which you will discover.

Existing cores are unchanged.

Missions and Enemies

Many small and medium sized upgrades have been added to missions in various chapters. Too many to list, but should continue to make the new player experience smoother, clearer and more fun.

Turrets, flying enemies and some of the larger bosses have a higher chance to resist knockaround effects.

Grey enemies no longer drop special items (they always had a reduced chance, but now it is 0 chance).

Zone Content

A few new enemy types have been added in the world. In addition Poison Cloud and Missile Shield may be present on enemies. With the latter, missile users will need to enter within approximately half screen range in order to damage the enemy.

A waypoint now exists at the start of the Castle Doom final instance.

When a group member closes a warp in Group Challenge, a banner will notify the entire group.

Red and Green terminal side bosses now drop significantly more experience orbs and credits.

The following zone content has been added by the world team. Most of these were slated for launch but didn’t make it in.

The new “Fire and Ice” themed PVP map is under heavy internal testing and development and will be released to Test Center by the end of August. Other modes are in various stages of development.

Valkyrie has showed up in the game as a harbinger of the new PvP format that we are testing internally. When the new format goes live you will be able to buy special rings from her by spending Golden Crowns. You get 1 golden crown for each PvP match you complete.

We will release more info on the new PvP format when it goes to Test Center.

Hero Upgrades

We’re changing and improving heroes every day - many upgrades will appear on the Test Center server in the weeks ahead but will not be captured in these patch notes.

Our goal with designing heroes is always to make all heroes play well and feel powerful in multiple situations.

General Hero Changes:

For maximum flexibility, all powers can now be bound to all mouse buttons and all keyboard keys.

Heroes can no longer move or attack within the first 0.5 seconds of a hero switch, to prevent an accidental cancellation.

The Area Power and Movement Power keywords are now visible on all applicable power tooltips. Work will continue to ensure all powers have tooltips that are as clear as possible to ensure player understanding of the systems.

Black Panther

This represents an initial review pass of Black Panther. As with all heroes, additional design passes will continue to occur, taking into account performance data from the live server, Test Center server and player feedback.

All physical and ranged combat powers are now tagged as Fighting Powers to gain bonuses from stats.

Agile Kick: Reduced the cost from 24 to 20.

Enervating Slash: Removed the slow effect as it was redundant with Freezing Slash. The power now weakens and does damage over time to enemies.

Freezing Slash: Increased the damage of the power by 20%. The slow no longer scales off of ranks in Enervating Slash, but now scales off of ranks in itself. Attack speed increased by 25% to be competitive with Enervating Slash. Slow effect strengthened to match the previous slow strength of Enervating Slash.

Jungle Snare: Power now also makes enemies more vulnerable to damage.

Panther God's Gift: Power can now be slotted on right mouse button. Resistance debuff now reduces enemy defenses by a large scaling amount to have a larger impact on bosses.

Panther Slash: Increased the damage of the power by 20%.

Panther Speed: Power now also increases crit chance while active, giving the power a role in combat. Reduced the cost from 50 to 35, to better match the strength of the ability. Also added a cooldown that matches the duration of the effect, to indicate when the power should be reactivated.

Panther's Grace and Panther Sight: The unlock order of these two powers has now been swapped. Panther's Grace now unlocks at level 16, allowing players to reach high dodge scores earlier. Panther's Sight now unlocks at level 20, and the damage bonus granted has been increased to better match its new position.

Predator's Aim: Power now reduces enemy defenses by a scaling percentage to be more effective against bosses. Effect duration has also been rebalanced to match the strength of the defense reduction.

Triple Shot: Increased the damage by roughly 50%. Reduced the spread and slightly increased the projectile size to better clear groups and be more effective against large single enemies. Reduced the spirit cost from 30 to 27.

Vibranium Trap: Increased damage contribution from items to be more competitive with Scything Slash.

Cable

This represents an initial review pass of Cable. As with all heroes, additional design passes will continue to occur, taking into account performance data from the live server, Test Center server and player feedback.

Blistering Bolt: Increased the damage scaling by 5%. Also increased the damage synergy from 2% to 2.5% in other basic powers, to be consistent with Searing Shot.

Bodyslider Bomb (Ultimate Power): The power has been rebalanced to no longer deal percentage based damage, but instead deal a large amount of flat damage (damage dealt is similar to what Cyclops can achieve with his Ultimate Power. The taunt now affects enemies that are offscreen. The explosion now affects the entire screen, always stuns bosses, and no longer teleports enemies away from the explosion area. These changes allow the power to function more consistently in end game.

Bold Aura: Slightly increased the bonus damage scaling to have a more rewarding growth rate.

Concussion Blast: Power activation and projectile travel speed have been increased by 5%, to make the power more responsive. Damage has been increased by 10%.

Elusive Roll (now Defensive Roll): Power has been renamed to Defensive Roll, and changed to roll to the mouse cursor position. Additionally, a small passive dodge bonus has been added to the power to give more reward when points are placed in the power, or when an item buffs/grants ranks in the power.

Energy Pulse: Increased the damage scaling by 5%. Power now deals scaling bonus damage when it crits. Also increased the damage synergy from 1% to 2.5% in other basic powers, to be consistent with Searing Shot.

Mental Resilience: Power now clears and grants temporary immunity to all forms of crowd control, not just mental negative status conditions.

Quick Bodyslide: Removed the cooldown from the power. We'll make additional adjustments to this power in a future update, and rebalance this power and Deadpool's version to be consistent with each other.

Searing Shot: Increased the damage scaling by 5%.

Vortex Grenade: The activation speed of this power has been sped up (both animation and travel time for grenade) to be more responsive. The power now also has a 1% damage synergy with Homing Shot in addition to the duration synergy.

Colossus

This represents an initial review pass of Colossus. As with all heroes, additional design passes will continue to occur, taking into account performance data from the live server, Test Center server and player feedback.

These changes for Colossus are based on feedback from the forums, including feedback from the Top 5 changes thread. Overall, we're buffing Colossus to be more relevant in both a melee DPS role and a support/tank role.

Basic Powers have been buffed to be more relevant in end game.

Steel Punch: Damage increased by 20% and damage synergy increased from 2% to 2.5% per point in other basic powers.

Reeling Punch: Damage increased by 20% and damage synergy increased from 2% to 2.5% per point in other basic powers.

Osmium Punch: Damage increased by 20% and damage synergy increased from 2% to 2.5% per point in other basic powers. Also adjusted the amount of Armor regenerated to better match the new Armor strength (see below).
Knockdown powers have been buffed to allow for easier flow into double damage with Reeling Punch.

Demolition Stomp: Knockdown increased to 1.5 seconds. Also increased damage by 25% to be competitive with Spinning Fists, and to encourage using this as an opener for his knockdown combos.

Crushing Smite: Knockdown increased to 2 seconds.

Steel Splash: Knockdown increased to 2 seconds. Additionally, this power has been sped up, with both the activation speed and travel speed increased by 15%.

Osmium Charge: Knockdown increased to 1.5 seconds.

Secondary Resource (Armor): We've buffed Colossus' Armor secondary resource, to make it more relevant to end game. The Armor regen rate has been increased by 50%.

Osmium Skin: Power now grants a scaling percent bonus to Armor and Armor regen rate, allowing ranks in the power to be meaningful at all levels.

Cyclops

This represents an initial review pass of Cyclops. As with all heroes, additional design passes will continue to occur, taking into account performance data from the live server, Test Center server and player feedback.

Cunning Blast: Now performs a backwards roll away from the cursor, instead of a slower leap.

Secondary Resource (Command Points): Increased the rate to gain Command Points. There will be more work done on Cyclops’ secondary resource in the future.

Tactical Command: Duration now increases with rank.

Defensive Tactician: The dodge bonus was unintuitive. It was applied only against targets affected by Tactical Analysis, but that meant it wouldn’t show up in the Character Sheet and would be difficult to tell who you could dodge more against.

Made the following changes:

Decreased dodge bonus, made it unconditional so that it is on all the time if you are near Cyclops (and always on Cyclops).

Adjusted dodge bonuses on dodge powers so that you cap out to 50% when all three dodge powers are rank 20.

Increased damage (and bonus damage from items) for several powers:

Channeled Blast

Cunning Blast

Explosive Blast

Maximum Optic Beam (Ultimate Power)

Optic Barrage

Piercing Blast

Wide Beam

Daredevil

This represents an initial review pass of Daredevil. As with all heroes, additional design passes will continue to occur, taking into account performance data from the live server, Test Center server and player feedback.

Statistics: Energy Projection now increases to 2 at level 10.

Club Strike: Attack speed increased by 10%.

Club Sweep: Damage increased by 10%.

Elektra Alliance (Ultimate Power): Elektra is now un-targetable and invulnerable.

Enter the Void: Cost reduced from 10 to 5. Duration increases at every rank, and scales in duration to make the progression per rank better. Tooltip fixed.

Man Without Fear: Now provides 5% more dodge at max rank. Provides slightly more dodge at each rank to make the progression per rank better.

Radar Ping: Cost reduced from 10 to 5.

Restorative Trance: Healing per second increased by 10% at every rank.

Taser Club: Attack speed increased by 10%. Updated VFX.

Whirling Club: Damage increased by 20%.

Deadpool

This represents an initial review pass of Deadpool. As with all heroes, additional design passes will continue to occur, taking into account performance data from the live server, Test Center server and player feedback.

Shoot All the Bullets: Damage increased by 20%. Cost reduced from 20 to 15.

Slice n' Dice: Damage increased by 15%. Cost reduced from 25 to 19.

Hawkeye

This represents an initial review pass of Hawkeye. As with all heroes, additional design passes will continue to occur, taking into account performance data from the live server, Test Center server and player feedback.

Destructive Volley (Ultimate Power): Damage over time per rank increased and debuff duration per rank decreased to ensure a net per second gain in overall damage. (The base homing arrow hits remain unchanged.)

Freeze Arrow: Now affects multiple targets in a small area around the point of impact.
Shrieking Arrow: Firing speed and range increased.

Taser Arrow: Now arcs to more than one target at higher ranks, although not to quite the same degree as Captain America’s shield bounces or a lightning power.

Tear Gas Arrow: Now calculates its damage per second so that the duration scaling on the area of effect is a pure increase, instead of stretching and scaling higher values to fit. Firing speed and range increased.

Trick Arrows: Several powers in this category have had their spirit costs reduced.
Vibranium Arrowheads: Now improves the defense penetration of ALL powers, not just ones on the Archery tab to help open some alternative builds.

Hulk

This represents an initial review pass of Hulk. The defense system upgrade will have a huge impact on Hulk and he will be designed around that system in the coming weeks. As with all heroes, additional design passes will continue to occur, taking into account performance data from the live server, Test Center server and player feedback.

Stances: Stances have been redesigned so they are mostly passive with a short activated ability (passive effects are still on even if the power is not equipped). Activated abilities start with a 20 second cooldown and scale down .25 seconds per rank.

Hulk Tough: Added a damage shield that scales with ranks; activate to become immune to damage for 3 seconds.

Hulk Free: Added a movement speed buff; activate to cleanse CC effects and to become immune to them for 3 seconds.

Iron Man:

This represents an initial review pass of Iron Man. As with all heroes, additional design passes will continue to occur, taking into account performance data from the live server, Test Center server and player feedback.

Jet-Assisted Slam: Adjusted the power to hit as an AoE instead of a forward cone, to make the power easier to use. Added 2% damage synergies with Hyper-Velocity Charge and Death From Above.

Hyper-Velocity Charge: Added 2% damage synergies with Jet-Assisted Slam and Death From Above.

Death From Above: Added 2% damage synergies with Jet-Assisted Slam and Hyper-Velocity Charge.

Our primary goal for Iron Man in this patch was to improve the feel of his basic powers and his trio of micro-missile powers. For his basic powers, we focused on speeding up the attacks and the projectiles so that they’re easier to use against mobile enemies.

Repulsor Beam: Sped up the attack animation by 15% and the projectile speed by 60%.

Freon Ray: Sped up the attack animation by 15% and the projectile speed by 60%.

Disruptor Beam: Sped up the attack animation by 15% and the projectile speed by 60%.

For the micro-missile powers, we improved their targeting methods and gave Micro-Missiles and Missile Salvo a little bit more damage.

Micro-Missiles: Increased starting damage by 33%. Updated the targeting of this power. The power can now be manually targeted by activating while the mouse cursor is over an enemy. When no target is selected, the missiles prioritize enemies in the center of the screen. If there are no enemies in the center of the screen, the missiles target the nearest enemy.

Missile Salvo: Increased the damage scaling by 25% and raised the starting damage to be more competitive with Micro-Missiles.

Automated Missiles: Updated the targeting of this power. The missile prioritizes enemies in the center of the screen. If there are no enemies in the center of the screen, the missile targets the nearest enemy.

Jean Grey

Jean Grey has a significant number of changes in the works for an upcoming patch. For today, we wanted to increase her base move speed as part of a global design review.

Jean Grey's base movement speed has been increased by roughly 10% to be on par with most other heroes.

Ms. Marvel

This represents an initial review pass of Miss Marvel. We intend to further review Ms. Marvel’s basic mechanics, tankiness and overall power trees. As with all heroes, additional design passes will continue to occur, taking into account performance data from the live server, Test Center server and player feedback.

Statistics: Energy Projection now increases to 6 at level 54.

Photon Punch: Now increases photonic energy with each strike. Now deals physical damage.

Cosmic Haymaker: Slightly increased range, and improved the targeting. Haymakers should not miss as often.

Mighty Punch: Damage increased by 20%, putting it on par with Photon Punch.

Defiant Escape: No longer requires or spends photonic energy to become immune to conditions for a brief duration, and gains 0.25 seconds of immunity per point (up from 0.1 seconds). After activation, players can now move immediately and can activate the power without being under the effects of crowd control.

Photonic Blast: Now a basic power. Now has a 3% damage synergy with Stellar Beam.

Stellar Beam: Now a basic power. Now has a 3% damage synergy with Photonic Blast.

Photonic Regeneration: Secondary resource cost has been removed to activate the instant heal. Photonic Regeneration's healing effects are now increasing by your current level of Photonic Regeneration. Heal over time duration is now 3 seconds (down from 5). Cooldown has increased to 3 seconds. Healing has been slightly reduced to compensate for the reduced activation costs.

Stellar Flare: Maximum charge up time has been reduced by 25%. Ms. Marvel is now immune to all crowd control while channeling Stellar Flare. Now grants a 50% damage reduction buff for a short duration. The duration is based on how much photonic energy you consumed when using the power, up to 10 seconds at maximum photonic energy.

Photonic Defense: Now adds photonic energy for each attack blocked.

Energy Absorption: Now has a chance to gain photonic energy when dealing energy damage.

Kree Toughness: Now has a secondary effect of increasing attack speed for fighting powers, based on how much photonic energy you currently have.

Warbird Charge: Now adds photonic energy for each enemy that is hit.

Crashdown Strike: Finishing animation is now shorter, and can be cancelled immediately after Ms. Marvel has landed. Now grants a 50% damage reduction buff for a short duration. The duration is based on how much photonic energy you consumed when using the power, up to 10 seconds at maximum photonic energy.

Binary Overdrive (Ultimate Power): Now increases all types of damage.

Secondary resource (Photonic Energy): has been converted to a 'pip' system, to make it easier for players to see how much energy they have at a quick glance. Photonic Energy now grants percent damage reduction, up to 30% at maximum photonic energy (3% per pip.)

Increased damage scaling for these powers:

Flying Knee

Roundhouse Kick

Uppercut Blast

Warbird Charge

Punisher

Movement speed has been increased by roughly 10% to be on par with most other heroes.

Explosive Rocket: now deals double damage to targets at the center of its effect.

Pain Tolerance: Now reduces damage by a flat percentage. This mitigation amount increases when Punisher has low health.

Proximity Mine: explosion delay timer reduced by 25%. Now reduces the defenses of affected enemies.
Secondary resource (Vengeance): No longer decays.
Show No Mercy: Can now be used against any target. Base damage reduced by 38%. Now deals double damage against stunned or knocked down targets.
Sticky Mine: Explosion delay timer reduced by 25%.

Chaos Tempest: Sped up power activation and recovery by 25% to make the power easier to use in dense combat.

Secondary resource (Chaos Flux): Added a decay and made it do something all the time. It now it gives % damage bonus based on current amount. A larger redesign for this secondary resource is in development that involves some cool new engineering.

Spider-Man

Spider-Man just has some simple changes in this patch before a larger review.

Corrosive Web Fluid: Increased damage scaling, and added a damage synergy with Web Spray in addition to the duration synergy.

Leaping Assault: Now knocks down enemies rather than knocks back. Also now flags enemies as ’webbed‘ to combo with Sticky Strike.

Storm

Due to changes in Storm's power trees, all Storm players have been given a free respec for their power points.

Chain Lightning/Thundering Bolt: Chain Lightning is now unlocked at level 6. Thundering Bolt is now unlocked at level 16. Chain Lightning is a fun, iconic skill and should be available at a lower level. Thundering Bolt was swapped since Storm has access to other crowd control methods in early levels. Damage on these powers have been adjusted appropriately for their new positions in the power tree.

Crashing Hail: Damage scaling has been massively increased. Synergy has been converted to damage rather than duration. The duration scaling per level has been lowered in favor of higher damage scaling for more power interactivity.

Storm’s tempest powers have been divided into two categories to allow Storm players more flexibility over the buffs they want to activate. Two tempest powers – Thundering Tempest and Quickening Tempest – have been renamed and moved.

Gusting Tempest and Freezing Tempest: Still classified tempest powers, and only one of the two can be active at once. They now drain spirit over time while active, are both located in the Stormcrafter tree, and have gained additional effects.

Gusting Tempest: Now deflects all projectiles upon turning the skill on or off, and has gained a passive chance while active to deflect projectiles in addition to knocking back enemies.
Freezing Tempest: Now deals energy damage to all enemies in the tempest area while active, and has gained a damage synergy with Crashing Hail.

Refreshing Breeze and Quickening Breeze (formerly Quickening Tempest): Now classified as breeze powers, and only one of the two may be active at a time. They now reserve a percentage of your maximum spirit.

You may have a breeze power and a tempest power active simultaneously.

Thundering Maelstrom (formerly Thundering Tempest): Will no longer disable tempest powers (or breeze powers) and is not classified as either. Players may use a tempest power, breeze power, and Thunder Maelstrom all at once.

Lightning Rush: Now part of the Skybreaker tree, and unlocks at level 28 (up from level 10). The damage of the skill has been accordingly increased. Storm already has mobility skills at early and mid levels, and we wanted to open up the level 10 Windrider unlock spot for a new passive (see below).

Turbulent Winds: A new passive power unlocked at level 10, Turbulent Winds adds a damage vulnerability debuff to Buffeting Zephyr, Sirocco Rush, and Sudden Tornado. This passive will bring more utility and gameplay to the wind powers, and give Storm players more combo potential with their builds.

Crashing Hail and Blizzard have been combined into one power. The new Crashing Hail now unlocks at level 20 (down from 28), and slows enemies in its area of effect in addition to the damage and armor reduction. The damage and damage scaling of the skill has been increased, and it now has a damage synergy with Freezing Tempest. Blizzard did not provide enough impact, and this change will solidify Hail as debuff-centric AoE with solid damage.

Lightning Rush: Now deals double damage against stunned targets.

Thundering Bolt: Gained a small amount of scaling on the stun duration with power ranks.

Sirocco Rush: No longer has a synergy with Lightning Rush. Instead, Sirocco Rush now gains stun duration with power ranks.

Sudden Tornado: Now knocks foes back (instead of knockup), and fires three tornadoes per cast. The damage of each tornado has been reduced to compensate, but the end result is an overall increase in the damage and utility of the power. Quickening Breeze now scales by a flat amount with each power point. This will result in higher ranks of the power becoming more effective than previously.

Spirited: Now scales by a flat amount with each power point. This will result in higher ranks of the skill becoming more effective than previously. Spirited now increases your maximum spirit by a percentage in addition to restoring spirit per second.

Lightning Storm: now has an upfront burst of damage when cast. The lingering DoT field's damage has been scaled down roughly 20% to compensate, the result of this will be an overall increase in the damage of the power.

Slow effects on Freezing Tempest, Crashing Hail, and Thundering Maelstrom have had their scaling increased per power point, rather than slow bonus synergies with each other.
Gusting Tempest and Freezing Tempest reserve a flat amount of spirit to keep active, have gained additional effects, and now share a damage synergy.

Gusting Tempest has gained light physical damage and is now tagged as a Wind Power, and its deflection chance has been retuned to be higher at rank 1.

Freezing Tempest has gained a chance to freeze enemies within its area.

Crashing Hail, Thundering Maelstrom, and Lightning Storm now share a damage synergy with each other.

Quickening Breeze and Refreshing Breeze now reserve 20% spirit to maintain.
Refreshing Breeze now restores light health over time in addition to increasing defenses and cleansing on toggle.

Turbulent Winds grants a short burst of movement speed when Storm dodges an attack.
Increased the slow and slow scaling of Thundering Maelstrom and Crashing Hail.
Increased the damage scaling of Ball Lightning.

Thing

Thing will receive a full review in the coming weeks.

Steadfast Aura: Now grants healing per second. This improvement, and the defense improvement to Guardian Aura, were made to help offset the reduction in bonus damage granted by Aggressive Aura, which was granting multiple times the bonus that other similar powers were.

Thor

These are all the changes for Thor from the last month or so, combined. We are continuing to monitor Thor, particularly as related to the defense system upgrade coming in the next major patch.

Almighty Mjolnir: Increased initial damage by 20%. Increased missile radius by 20%. Reduced the additional Spirit cost for charging Almighty Mjolnir to 5 per second (down from 10 per second). Initial spirit cost of this power remains unchanged.

Secondary resource (Odinforce): You gain a small amount of Odinforce whenever you hit with a ranged power and a large amount of Odinforce whenever you hit with a melee power or kill an enemy. Removed the mechanic which gained Odinforce when enemies are nearby.

Thunder Surge now God Blast: Massively increased the base damage and scaling damage. God Blast spends all remaining Odinforce and adds significant damage per point of Odinforce used. Animation speed increased to be more responsive. We’ll be watching the data on this power to ensure it lives up to its name!

Thundering Strike: This power will now ignore some defense (2.5% defense penetration per rank in the power). Increased radius. Made the chance to stun scale more aggressively at higher ranks

Thunderous Charge: Increased damage by 10%.

Changed unlock levels of some of Thor's Powers and updated damage curves.

Wolverine

All power synergies and dependencies for Wolverine have been removed in favor of higher base damage per rank and self-sufficient power mechanics in order to encourage power point allocation diversity, especially in endgame builds.

Adrenaline Rush: Now a toggled effect. Dodge bonus now scales only off of ranks in Adrenaline Rush (synergy with Furious Lunge ranks removed). Overall benefits reduced at lower ranks and increased at higher ranks.

Character Sheet and Damage Rating

A few new stats have been added to the character sheet. We are looking to iterate on presentation of information to ensure that it is easy to understand.

Players were sometimes confused when the equipped an item with +10 damage and didn’t get +10 damage on every power. This is because every power has a damage rating multiplier; this multiplies the damage rating value which now shows up on the character sheet. We are going to add Damage Rating Multiplier to each power’s tooltip at some point in the future.

Autofire powers, particularly, get less Damage per shot because they have a low Damage Rating Multiplier while Hulk’s Punch gets full value from Damage Rating.

This does not change any powers or items; it is simply a presentation change.

Bug Fixes

There are many pages of small bugs that have been fixed. These include many VFX fixes, tooltip bugs, enemy behavior bugs, animation bugs, item/artifact bugs and interface quirks.

Here are the top 10 fixes that you are likely to notice:

Some missions that were not giving party credit on interaction with mission objects have been adjusted to properly give party credit when anyone in the party interacts with the object.

Resistance penetration should work for all skillshot powers.

Healing and other beneficial effects will now work when you are Invulnerable.

Items and Powers that grant a percentage of generic armor to all types of damage, should now be reflected with an updated number on the Character Sheet.

Fixed the character sheet's ‘stats’ tab not displaying health regen granted by powers.

Items and Powers that grant a percentage of generic armor to all types of damage, should now be reflected with an updated number on the Character Sheet.

Vanity Pets are no longer targeted by bouncing attacks.

The summons from the AIM Robot Dispenser now follow you around instead of wandering off randomly.
• All slow powers should actually slow correctly.